Category: Featured Headlines
The Invisible Shield: Public health saved your life today, and you didn’t even know it
PBS/Bloomberg Four-Part Docu Series The Invisible Shield examines how public health makes modern life possible, but it is underfunded, undervalued and misunderstood putting our health at risk. Arlington, Virginia – THE INVISIBLE SHIELD, a new four-part documentary series from RadicalMedia made possible by Bloomberg Philanthropies, reveals how the field of public health has saved countless lives […]
Mar 27, 2024
Dairy cattle in Texas and Kansas test positive for bird flu
MPR News Milk from dairy cows in Texas and Kansas has tested positive for bird flu, U.S. officials said Monday. Officials with the Texas Animal Health Commission confirmed the flu virus is the Type A H5N1 strain, known for decades to cause outbreaks in birds and to occasionally infect people. The virus is affecting older dairy […]
Mar 26, 2024
How do we halt the next pandemic? Be kind to critters like bats, says a new paper
NPR Almost every pandemic we’ve seen over the last century has come from a virus that’s spilled over into humans from an animal. “Generally, pandemics are seen as a biomedical problem,” says Raina Plowright, an infectious disease ecologist at Cornell University. “Certainly, once the pandemic is underway, it is a biomedical problem because you need to […]
Mar 26, 2024
Bird flu discovered in U.S. dairy cows is ‘disturbing’
Science Scientist who tracks infections on cattle farms discusses implications of recently announced virus detections. The bird flu virus that has wreaked havoc around the world appears to have surfaced in U.S. dairy cows, the first time this viral subtype has been documented in any cattle. Three U.S. states—Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico—on 25 March […]
Mar 26, 2024
Here Are the Viruses to Worry About Right Now
Time As winter ends, several viruses are still continuing to rise across the U.S., according to data from WastewaterSCAN, a network of wastewater surveillance sites. Norovirus, one type of influenza, and another respiratory virus are all increasing or have recently peaked in samples from the network’s 190 wastewater treatment facilities, which are located in 41 states. “What we’re […]
Mar 26, 2024
Puerto Rico Declares Public Health Emergency as Dengue Cases Rise
Time Puerto Rico declared a public health emergency over dengue, a mosquito-borne illness that has surged throughout the Americas this year. Health officials in Puerto Rico have identified 549 cases of dengue across the U.S. territory of 3.2 million people, with almost half the cases concentrated in the capital of San Juan. Also known as […]
Mar 26, 2024
Health workers fear it’s profits before protection as CDC revisits airborne transmission
NBC The agency is developing a crucial set of guidelines that health care facilities will use to control the spread of infectious diseases for years to come. Four years after hospitals in New York City overflowed with Covid patients, emergency physician Dr. Sonya Stokes remains shaken by how unprepared and misguided the American health system […]
Mar 19, 2024
Countries Where the Most People Have Died From COVID-19
USA Today As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches into its third year, the U.S. is approaching a grim milestone – nearly 1 million COVID-19-related deaths. Even as new cases and deaths have dropped to relatively low levels as of May 2022, local and state health officials are still reporting anywhere from dozens to hundreds of fatal […]
Mar 19, 2024
U.S. measles milestone: 60 cases so far in 2024 — more than all of 2023
CBS News The U.S. has now tallied at least 60 confirmed or suspected measles cases investigated so far this year by authorities in 17 states — more than the 58 cases reported nationwide in all of 2023. It comes as health officials are grappling with multiple major outbreaks of the highly contagious virus around the world. Now with spring break travel looming, […]
Mar 19, 2024